


No Man's Land

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Marauders' Era, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5941057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus' Muggle Studies assignment leads to some intriguing thoughts and twisted dreams. But is that all?</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Man's Land

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

_No man's land--_

__

n. 1. Land under dispute by two opposing parties, especially the field of battle between the lines of two opposing entrenched armies. 

__

2.An area of uncertainty or ambiguity.

__

"You can either be a rich werewolf or a poor wizard. You can't be a combination of the two." Remus' mother had told him this while patching up his frayed robes in his third year of school. He had held back from pointing out that he was indeed, a combination of the two. He knew they were poor and he knew he was a werewolf. No matter how much they spent on hopeful cures, he would always be a werewolf and as long as his parents kept spending, they would always be poor.

It was his mother's same logic that had gotten him to take Muggle Studies his third year. She'd said some such rubbish about upholding his family's heritage by learning more about it, when really he knew everything about muggles already. But of course, he could never say no to his mother.

Sixth year had taken an interesting turn in lessons for Muggle Studies though, and had caught Remus unawares. They were doing class work of which he had to actually study. For their Christmas holidays, they were assigned a topic of muggle history and learn as much about it as they could.

Unfortunately, Remus had drawn the vaguest topic in the hat: World War I.

He'd bristled when he'd read the words on his white sliver of parchment and had gone straight to the library after class to help narrow down his options.

Now it was three days before holidays were over and he was sitting beside Sirius in the common room, trying to fill two feet of parchment with information on World War I and actually come up with a point by the end of his essay.

"No man's land..." Remus muttered under his breath, reading the topic of an entire chapter in his text. His friend looked over his shoulder to read.

"Interesting." Sirius said, letting his chin rest comfortably against Remus' shoulder.

"In World War I particularly, no man's land was more often than not an area of land between two opposing sides' trenches. It was said that any man who ventured there was never seen again. It was a place of high danger for soldiers, and if wounded in that space they could be stranded there for days at a time until they died or--doubtfully-- were rescued."

Remus shrugged away from Sirius' chin on his shoulder, "Sounds awful."

"I've read about this before--something about a soldier's body wriggling around, but it was really a rat eating the inside of his body--"

"Sirius! That's disgusting!" Remus hollered, covering his ears. "I'm sure Wormtail would love to hear that, go owl him about it or something."

"I was only--" Sirius began again, but Remus was already getting up from his seat.

"I'm going upstairs." He announced.

"Why?" The dark haired boy asked, looking offended that his friend would leave him.

To get away from you. "I'm absolutely shattered from all this reading and writing, I'm going to head to bed early." Remus said, ignoring the loud thudding in his chest.

"Well, alright..." Sirius said, confused at his friend's odd and sudden change of behavior.

"G'night, Sirius."

"Night."

~+~

Bullets were whizzing over his head, barely missing his body by inches. The thudding of his heart told him he was still alive and his uniform told him he was a solider.

It was odd, he thought while he began running through a field littered with dead bodies, that everything was black and white. A gun was in his hand, but he didn't remember picking it up.

The shots were still flying over head.

"Remus!" A disembodied voice shouted, "Don't go out there! That's No Man's Land!"

He whirled around to see who had spoken and a saw a group of grim faces looking at him, shaking their heads in dismay. They were all wearing soldiers' wear, and their guns were at their sides.

Remus looked at them for a long moment, before turning around to face the stretch of land before him. He saw a figure in the distance, waving at him.

Sirius.

"Oy! Moony--come out here! It's not so bad!" Black yelled back at him.

_Not so bad?_ Remus thought incredulously, eyeing the flying bullets and bloodied bodies on the ground. But his heart called for the other boy. He could still hear the voices behind him, telling him not to.

"You know you want it, just come on through. Trust me." Sirius beckoned. Remus made a perilous step forward. A bullet hit him in the chest...was it his heart? He felt himself falling, falling...

He was on the ground looking up at the gray sky. Before matching silver gray eyes were looking down at him. "Remus." Sirius whispered, petting his cheek.

"Take me back, Sirius." Remus told him.

"You can't go back from No Man's Land."

"We can...." He said hoarsely, "We will. We can be different from everybody else, and still leave this place."

Silver eyes flashed to stare at him, "How?"

"Together."

~+~

Remus awoke from his dream, his chest still stinging right in front of his heart, only to realize it was because a book was underneath him. Gingerly, he got up from his place atop his duvet and straightened himself out, tossing the book on his nightstand.

"Moony?" A quiet voice crept from the silence to Remus' sensitive ears. He winced and spun to face his friend's bed.

"Yes?"

"You alright?" Hesitantly.

"M'fine, Padfoot, go back to sleep."

Too late. The shuffling of bare feet hitting the cold floor could be heard until finally a head of black hair and silver eyes came into view beside him.

"You were having a nightmare."

"No I wasn't. It was just a weird dream." Remus said defensively, feeling his cheeks turn pink.

"What about?" Sirius was settling down beside Remus on the bed, going so far as to grab one of his pillows up and inhale its scent.

"No Man's Land." Remus answered carefully.

Sirius raised a dark eyebrow, "Really?"

He took a deep breath, "And you."

"Me?" Sirius questioned, a small smirk appearing on his lips.

Remus nodded, "In the dream, you were telling me to go out to No Man's Land, where you already were...But I didn't want to, but you kept calling, so I went. People were screaming at me not to, but I did anyway and I got shot." Instinctively Remus put his hand to his heart.

"There?" Sirius put his hand over Remus'.

"Yes."

"You didn't let me finish earlier." Sirius said suddenly, "Earlier, before you went to bed, I was going to say something."

"Oh?" Remus' heart began pounding again.

"Besides being a piece of battle in a war, No Man's Land can represent... uncertainty. A place you don't go. But Remus... I want to go. I want to go to No Man's Land with you. I want us to go through and past it. I'm tired of not knowing what your thinking, just tell me how you feel..."

Sirius' hand slithered up Remus' leg. "No Man's Land?"

"Yes, let's figure it out. We'll come back." His hand was on Remus' hip now, the other sliding into his hair.

"How?" Remus whispered, the words from his dream vague in his mind.

"Together."

And so the two boys explored the places of ambiguity with each other, guiding hands and mouths and words. They were lost in a world where men did not go together, but they came back with nothing lost but their hearts.

~+~


End file.
